03 November 2009

What Future?

When the UC Commission on the Future (aka the "Gould" Commission) was announced last July, we predicted that it would turn out to be mostly ineffectual. But that assessment was based on a misunderstanding of the real function of the Gould Commission. As it's becoming increasingly clear, its real task is not to find ways to preserve and protect the unique combination of quality and access that characterizes the UC — in other words, to save the UC in these difficult econonomic times. Rather, the main function of the Gould Commission is to promote acceptance — gently if possible, more robustly if necessary — of the new "privitized" or "hybridized" model of the University. In a word, propaganda.